


Half-Life

by Tallulah_Rasa



Series: These Days [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, meaning of life stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallulah_Rasa/pseuds/Tallulah_Rasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack, Daniel, and how people aren't like isotopes.  (Or: Science is certain.  People, not so much.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final bit of a Jack trilogy starting in S.8 ("If You Know the Candle Light is Fire...") and going through Jack's stint in D.C. ("A Cinderella Story.") This is set post Jack's retirement, and contains many Simpsons references and some brief mentions of SGA and a few other scifi staples. The Simpsons references are explained in the end notes.

The smell of barbecue still hung in the air.  It was dark enough to see the fireflies flitting overhead, dark enough that the trees were turning into black silhouettes against the sky.  The kids were still racing around the yard, though they should have been corralled and bathed and tucked in a good hour ago.   They’d crossed the border from over-tired to cranky, and there’d be tears soon, Jack knew, but he didn’t have the heart to say anything.  After all, wasn’t this what they’d been fighting for, all those years?  This kind of peace, this kind of summer night, these kinds of small, preventable, every-day problems? 

He sank back into his deck chair and looked over at Daniel, sprawled beside him  in the grass with the thoughtless grace of those unacquainted with arthritis, and the doped contentment of a man stuffed with good food and heavy-duty antihistamines. 

“You’re a snake head!” one of the smaller kids yelled at one of the bigger ones, and Jack raised an eyebrow at Daniel, who shook his head. 

“Documentary on boa constrictors on the Discovery Channel,” Daniel explained. 

“Ah,” Jack said.  “Of course.” 

“Well, you’re a… a Borg!” a voice countered, no less commanding for being high-pitched and obviously pre-pubescent.  “And you live on a Death Star!” 

“Long, rainy weekend with Teal’c,” Daniel offered, though that time Jack needed no explanation. 

The first kid, suffering a palpable hit, began to wail, and her mother hustled her into the house. 

“I suppose,” Jack mused, “that if you know the Gate and the Goa’uld are real,  _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ seem like documentaries.” 

“Also _Farscape_ ,” Daniel said in a tone suggesting he’d done a study.  “But not _Buffy_ 0r the original _Battlestar Galactica_.” 

“Someone should write a paper,” Jack said seriously, and even in the growing darkness he could see Daniel’s fleeting grin.  He took a sip of warmish beer and swatted at something buzzing by his ear without tensing more than a little.  “Maybe I should balance the kids’ world view by sitting them down with some of _my_ DVDs.” 

“We follow the laws of thermodynamics in this house!” Daniel said on cue. 

“Of course,” Jack conceded, “that would depend on whose house they were in.  At Sam’s…” 

“Well, d’uh,” Daniel said, and Jack wondered briefly if he was thinking of the time Sam ended up with a Stargate in her basement, or something else.  What had Sam’s last report been about, anyway?  Right -- the IOC had wanted to know about the possibility of using the Gate for time travel.  He hadn’t reviewed it with Daniel.  The past, the future, the buried and the unnamed, those weren’t things he and Daniel talked about.  They should start, probably, but Jack was too well-versed in strategic planning to take on a mission with so much unknown terrain, especially when they were so poorly equipped. He wouldn’t leadDaniel in _that_ direction without a hell of lot more intel. 

He leaned back on his elbows, and squinted up at the pin-point stars glittering overhead.  Some people looked up and saw pictures and stories, he thought, and some people looked up and found a way home.  And some people looked up and saw… 

“Nice night,” he said to Daniel. 

“No one’s shooting at us,” Daniel agreed. “Or threatening the planet.  So far, anyway.” 

Jack looked over.  Daniel’s eyes weren’t on the sky, but on the ground by his feet.  Archeological habit? Jack wondered.  “That’s upbeat,” he said. 

“I think I’ve become a realist,” Daniel said absently, still looking down, and not where Jack was looking. 

And so much for strategy, so much for his careful plans.  Daniel had always chosen their path and forged ahead, right from the beginning, driven by some impulse no purely military mind would ever understand.  Once, Jack would have said Daniel’s compass swung to a true north of academic curiosity and love.  But that had changed over time, or maybe Jack had just started to see things differently. 

Maybe he’d just started to _see_. 

Jack peered at Daniel, who was partly in the dark, and partly illuminated by the candles someone had lit as night closed in.   He didn’t look like the Daniel who’d opened the Gate all those years ago; a passport photo taken back then wouldn’t get him past airport security today.  He was less there, less _theirs_ , than he’d been.  Experience could do that to you, Jack knew, and Daniel…well, he’d certainly boldly gone where no one had gone before.  And he’d changed the whole universe in the process, a hell of a thing to have on your resume.  Not to mention that he’d ascended; Jack thought that even after all these years, no one  – not even Daniel – really understood how that had changed him.  And Daniel didn’t understand that his ascension had changed _all_ of them – hell, had probably changed the Ancients, too.  Jack still wondered about Oma when he looked at Daniel and saw, for a minute, the ghost of who Daniel had been; saw, for a minute, someone he didn’t know.  Yeah, she’d sent Daniel back to them, but nobody gave up that easily; nobody gave up _Daniel_ that easily.  She had to have stuck a return ticket in some back pocket of his brain. Branded him somehow, planted a thread leading Daniel back to her… 

The Daniel voice in his head immediately veered off on a tangent about minotaurs and mazes, but Jack ignored it, because myths were about starting out, about becoming, and he and Daniel were well past the middle of the story.  It was too late for a set of directions or a subtle warning; they were on their own.  But then, that’s how they’d started, all those years ago – on their own.  And they’d taken down Ra, so they hadn’t done so badly. 

Even if there were a thousand things he should have done differently. 

Could have done better.  

Should have seen… 

Daniel was looking at him then, concern written on his face as clearly as if it had been etched in glyphs.  “You’re a million miles away,” Daniel said quietly. 

“And I’m right here,” Jack told him, and then he snapped his fingers.  “So much for the space-time continuum!” 

“Better not say that around McKay,” Daniel said mildly.  “He’d probably  – wait, are you making a point about the nature of human existence?”  Even in the flickering, candle-lit dark, Jack could see when Daniel’s eyes softened, brightened.  “Or are you about to do an impression of Professor Frink?” 

A chorus of crickets burst into a sudden crescendo right then, as loud as a crowd of hockey fans cheering a game-winning goal, as loud as that time Sam had used a little too much C-4 on the prison holding Teal’c on P3-whatever.  The crickets were singing as if the fate of the world depended on it, and in that moment Jack knew just how they felt, just how the sweaty kids whooping in the soft, warm night felt, how Daniel, pricked by the small, sharp edges of memories and ideasand a thousand blades of grass, felt.  And he knew that sometime soon – tomorrow, probably – he’d wonder if he _did_ know, but what the hell.  Answers weren’t everything.  Certainty wasn’t everything.  Life had taught him that; after a while you had to be a realist and— 

He looked at Daniel, who was scratching his ankle, but looked up when he felt Jack’s eyes on him. 

“Yes,” Jack said.  “Maybe.  What?” 

“This is one of those times…” Daniel said with a fake sigh, and eyes full of laughter. 

“One of what times?” Jack said, playing along. 

“Exactly,” Daniel said, and Jack knew again that it had all been worth it, every minute, and he finished his warm beer and laid back to listen to the kids, and the crickets, and the call of the stars. 

END

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this dropped into my head one morning, like a package through a mail slot, so I don’t know where it takes place or who the kids belong to. Sorry. 
> 
> The Simpsons references, in case you’re curious: 
> 
> “Lisa, in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!” is what Homer tells his second-grader after she builds a perpetual motion machine. 
> 
> Principal Skinner, after a particularly harrowing day, tells Bart that if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that sometimes it’s best to pretend something never happened. “This,” he says, “is one of those times.”
> 
> “One of what times?” Bart asks.
> 
> “Exactly!” Skinner says.
> 
> “No, really,” Bart says. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
> 
> (This may be a paraphrase; I can’t find the exact exchange online.)
> 
> And finally, Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr. is The Simpsons’ resident geek/inventor/scientist.


End file.
